Delaying Marriage (Part 1)

Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don’t steal, don’t lift
Twenty years of schoolin’
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don’t wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals
Don’t wanna be a bum
You better chew gum
The pump don’t work
’Cause the vandals took the handles

~Bob Dylan

Let me preface all of this by saying that I had to co-write and oversee a math test this week for the class I teach. So far the average is 65%, which is really low. But that's what happens when you have a long haired elf writing half the test (The half I did not write). Because of the time spent on running the testing game, I am introducing an edited version of a post I originally wrote a while ago.

I also sold a guitar amplifier via my online outlet, which took some time. Finally I bought and ate some tamales. That took less time. But it would have taken more time if I had not removed the shuck.

Gerald Ford eats tamales (with shuck).

Now for the actual post. Be warned that this is another one of those attacks on the Little Red School House (LRSH). I do not want this whole blog to become a dating/marriage/bliss'n'froofroo blog, but it is about the only topic I can talk about on general terms relevant to a public majority. This post has been through many versions. Most of it just turned into a rant. Some of the ranting has been snipped away. Some of the rambling rant is still present. I hope to be more organized next week.

In a recent newspaper article that I read, the topic of young adults "delaying marriage" was addressed. Most of us are familiar with this topic. It is a common one. This article was a summary of a study done by a researcher at my current university in cooperation with two colleagues at a university in Indiana. I provide two links to two articles about this study on "delaying marriage."

Here are the links: Marriage is still important to young adults,  and Young adults putting-off-marriage. You can read these if you so desire. 

This picture....so good.

I currently have been unable to read the actual study since it was published in a journal I do not have access to. (Do keep in mind that I work at a university that has access to probably a couple thousand research journals). It is hard for me to properly comment on something I have no access to, so I am going to refrain from talking about the articles specifically. 

Introduction to the Issues.
Articles like those mentioned above are rather common in that newspaper. They have taken it as their personal mission to rid the world of those who are not married in accordance with the ideal. It seems that almost every week, I see some sort of publication from this newspaper that speaks about the topic of delaying marriage. Maybe it would be for the best if I just stopped reading such things. But many times it is like a bad car accident. You just have to look.

In the topic of delaying marriage, we need to answer real questions, questions that are primary, questions that actually matter. Many of these questions are hard to answer. Admit that. Too often this topic is vastly over simplified and people resort to yelling useless platitudes and offering ineffectual observations. We all want someone to blame. No one wants to just come out and admit that sometimes we do not know why someone is unmarried. We assume that anyone over age 25 or so must have some evil reason for not being married. It's either porn or video games, right?

Again, as I have previously mentioned, there are indeed men (and women) with "issues." However, I would be hard pressed to point to any single people I personally know with "issues" that would make them categorically unmarriageable. That's one of the unfathomable thing about how marriage occurs. Marriage happens to imperfect people. Who knows why. Last I checked, ugly people can still get married. Unintelligent people can still get married. Video game addicts still get married (I once sat next to some at work). Hence it has always been puzzling to me when someone suggests a given unmarried person is still flying solo due to some wholly insignificant "issue" they see in said person's life. This is a manifestation of the strawman concept that I addressed a while ago.

This link is to an article written by a 29-year-old single woman about her life as someone who has yet to join the marriage club. She has an attitude that is much more positive than mine. About half of the comments left by anonymous readers on the article are laughably pompous or downright rude. I include only two (of 91 total comments):

"Judging from her picture, the person who wrote this article is attractive. Judging from her writing her personality seems okay.
My question is .. If she wants to get married, what is stopping her?"

"If an LDS female who looks like that would focus her efforts more on marriage instead of on defending herself, she probably could be married reasonably quickly."

Now of course I do not know anything about these commenters. Maybe they are really nice people. Yet clearly they have absolutely no flaming clue about how "the marriage game" works. These commenters are the types of folks who still think the Lakers should have gone for it on fourth down. Let me add that this lady who wrote the above article sings with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Why is she unmarried? Why hasn't a man asked her to marry him? (Because--alas--all a girl can do is wait for someone to pass her the ball). Who knows. She seems to have all of the advisable check boxes: Serves in the Church, has a college degree, interacts with the opposite gender, blah, blah, blah. The usual bullet points the "experts" cite. Maybe she has some sort of commitment issue. But there are a lot of people in the world who have problems with commitment, yet who are still married. Maybe she has an inflated opinion of herself. But I know lots and lots of pompous and proud married people. We could run down the whole checklist and probably not really come up with a satisfactory answer.

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Overall, the most common conclusion I have seen about rising marriage ages is that single people just need to "stop delaying marriage." That is pretty much the message I see from some sectors. They speak of single adults delaying marriage in the same way I might speak of ice melting in the sun. They treat the topic as if it was a foregone conclusion that single people must be delaying marriage. Ice melts in the sun, so of course a single person must be lacking in some quality that would otherwise quickly lead to marriage. It is unfathomable to them that not all of us meet our beloved spouse at age 15. "You mean you didn't meet your lover in the grocery store?" Some horses don't breed in the barn they were birthed in, you know.

A clearance on chunky stuff.

These people reduce marriage to a checkbox and make the whole institution cheap. They ignorantly think that I can just go out and buy a marriage in the discount rummage bin at WalMart. I also have too little room to herein address this, but understand that your little quixotic dative paradigm is not deterministic. Social economics has never been an assembly line.

If you read the 35 or so comments on the second news article I first shared above, a significant portion of them focus on stories about "back in the day" or how "young people these days" are just looking for more gadgets. I have already addressed the "back in my day" stories in a previous rodomontade. But the attack on young people about just wanting more electronics is ridiculous. I have found that more often than not such claims come from some middle aged man with an iPhone 430-Galactica, a big screen TV, a boat, and a nice truck to pull it. Try again buddy. I live in an apartment with walls that are painted four different colors since the owner wanted to save money and only painted half of the bathroom. I have a "dumb phone." I do not even own a TV. I buy my clothes at thrift stores. I am currently wearing pants that have a huge tear in the leg--pants, I might add, that I have owned for 10 years. And I never have had someone tell me they are not getting married because they wanted a new car or boat instead.*

Now admittedly, I own four guitars and three guitar amplifiers. This is probably the most impressive gadgetry I own. However, these purchases have been made over the course of more than a decade. You have to spend your money on something. I need something to do for entertainment, since clearly no one wants to wade, skate, eat out, eat in, cook together, or bowl (Did I list them all Messrs Ginobli, Tex, and Parkes?) in these parts. Furthermore, as I mentioned above, I just sold a guitar amp due to its increasing impracticality. And believe me when I say, if I had to choose between bidding for a cream colored American series Fender Stratocaster with maple neck and buying an engagement ring, clearly I would choose the latter. So far I have not been asked to make that choice.

I also have single friends and associates who have visited places all around the world. But I highly highly doubt that they are traveling the world in lieu of getting married. What do you want them to do, sit at home and wallow with a box of ice cream, just waiting for married life to come to them so that they can be as happy as you are? [Scoff]. You live life with the cards you are dealt, not the cards that someone else is dealt.

Obviously, if you and your lover are delaying getting married after having dated for, say, two years, you are probably just unduly dragging your feet. But even if this was true, is it my duty to the world to call you out on it? I am well aware of the glory stories of getting married with nothing but a pack of ramen and a few little fish. Please accept my congratulations and condolences. Honestly, if that time was right for you, wonderful. I really have no issues with you getting married when you feel the time is right. Just do not begrudge me my chance to get marriage right for myself.

(To be continued next week.)

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*I believe that there have been some studies that suggest that money is the largest factor never married college students cite in reasons why they are unmarried. Keep in mind that much of this research is based in asking singles in the 19-22 year old demographic why they are unmarried. However, such research does very little to explain why those around the median marriage ages (Say 26, 27 years old or so) are remaining unmarried. Much of our oft cited research on marriage too often seem to focus on those who are 7-10 years younger than the median marriage age. Get some solid research that shows that educated 27 year olds are delaying marriage due to money and then we can talk. Too often I hear well meaning people speak to single adults about the wrong (IMHO) topics in relation to marriage. It is an all too common practice to hear about some study done on non religious 20-year-old black women in New York and then drastically extrapolate it to religious 28-year-olds living in Idaho. Please make sure the study you are citing is relevant before trying to insinuate its results onto an unrelated population.